Letting Canada, and its stars, play in Olympic bronze-medal soccer match right non-call by FIFA

Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun columnist08.08.2012

Canada’s Christine Sinclair (centre) celebrates her goal during the semifinal women’s soccer match against the United States at the 2012 London Summer Olympics, in Manchester, England, on Monday, Aug. 6, 2012.Hussein Malla
/ AP

Members of Canada's Olympic women's soccer team react in disbelief both to the officiating and to their 4-3 loss to the United States in Monday's semifinal game. The women will battle France for the bronze on Thursday.Tanley Chou, Getty Images
/ Vancouver Sun

Christina Pedersen of Norway officiates during the women's semifinal soccer match between the U.S. and Canada Monday. Her questionable delay-of-game call drew the ire of the Canadian team and its fans.Andrew Yates, AFP, Getty Images
/ Postmedia News

COVENTRY, England — Now that cooler heads have prevailed, and no one’s been suspended (yet) — and at the risk of incurring patriotic Canadian rage — a couple of things do need to be said about the way Monday night unfolded for the Canadian women’s soccer team.

1. Goalkeeper Erin McLeod did hold the ball too long, and

2. The players’ emotions got the best of them, post-match.

Make that three things:

3. The Norwegian referee, Christiana Pedersen, panicked under pressure and lost her mind, awarding the free kick that led to the hand ball that led to the tying goal that led to extra time that led to the overwhelming overdogs, the United States, not having to going home with their tails between their legs while Canada played for a gold medal.

On a magnificently warm, sunny Wednesday at the pristine playing fields of Warwick University, all was forgiven if not forgotten by the Canadian women.

Word spread quickly that FIFA, the sports governing body, had determined that its investigation into the bitter post-game remarks by the losing side needed more time and ... well, had basically decided to bury the whole thing and maybe one day suspend the star of Canada’s team, Burnaby’s Christine Sinclair, at some future date — like for a couple of friendlies she hadn’t planned to play anyway.

To say coach John Herdman was relieved to have his best player available for Thursday’s bronze medal match against France — to say nothing of the thunder to Sinclair’s lightning, the equally vocal Melissa Tancredi — is a considerable understatement.

“I mean, listen, it was one of them where ... we were on tenter hooks, in danger of losing a key player, but more, just the danger of the game losing an opportunity of seeing such a great player playing in a bronze-medal match,” Herdman said.

“And I think people [read: FIFA] have come to their senses and made a great decision for the good of the game.

“So I think Christine is in a great space now. There’s nothing worse than going to bed wondering what’s going to happen, so I think everyone’s happy and we can focus now, and just get on with the planning [for France].”

The Canadians were gamely trying, as the saying goes, to put the whole incident behind them Wednesday, only it was never going to be that easy.

McLeod did, in fact, hold the ball a rather long time, which under normal circumstances would have garnered a warning or, at most, a yellow card. Granted, time-wasting in soccer is pretty much endemic, from delayed throw-ins to frittering over lining up for free kicks to players dawdling off the field when they’ve been subbed out late in games with their team ahead, and the most that comes of it is normally a yellow card, if that.

But McLeod had done it more than once, and for a very good reason. It made perfect sense to want to give as little possession time as possible to an opponent that, frankly — based on a lopsided head-to-head record and just about every other measurable — was the superior side.

And let’s face it, the Canadians were out of order by almost any sport’s standards in the volume and toxicity of their remarks about the Norwegian referee.

If they had merely said she was blind as a platypus and ought to be carrying a white cane and have a guide dog to help her navigate the field, they’d have been well within the bounds of fair comment.

It was when Sinclair accused Pedersen of having decided the result before the first ball was kicked, and when Tancredi suggested that the referee slept in Team USA jammies, that matters crossed the line from acceptable criticism to slander.

Ineptitude is one thing, bias quite another.

So FIFA took matters under advisement, and launched the kind of thorough investigation that Claude Rains launched when Humphrey Bogart shot the German general at the end of Casablanca.

FIFA’s non-action spoke volumes about the poor job it must have thought Pedersen did of officiating a fractious game between two fierce rivals.

Herdman didn’t totally forgive his players, or himself, for their ill-advised candour, but said there were circumstances no normal human being could have suffered in silence.

“It’s always a learning [experience], but it’s just one of those moments where ... I mean, what an occasion!” he said. “And you’ve just been robbed in the last few seconds of a game by a team you were planning to take to penalties — and I think for the players, it’s all about the time period. I mean, you don’t get the chance to settle down.

“Even as a coach, I mean, all it took was for you to ask one more question and I was gone. No matter how hard I tried, you know, it was underneath. So I think the players are the same. They try, but all it takes is to be next to one of the American players in the interview [area], and they’re talking and ... you can’t help yourself.”

Neither Sinclair nor Tancredi backed down from her sentiments.

“I mean, we’d just lost the semifinal of the Olympics — in one way or another — and we felt a little robbed, so we said those things and I don’t think any of us regret anything,” said Sinclair, who expressed no surprise at FIFA’s decision to allow her to play the bronze-medal game while the (cough) investigation continues.

“I don’t think now we can regret anything,” said Tancredi, who’s pretty much a volcano of emotions, and plays as powerful and pitiless a game as any woman in the world.

Check out the YouTube video of her casually stomping on the head of American Carli Lloyd in Monday’s game, and you’ll get the idea. She doesn’t take prisoners. So her bitterness post-game came naturally.

“Honestly, it was so emotional, so passionate, there was so so much behind that game ...,” said the 30-year-old from Hamilton. “You [media] guys are there, like, right after. That’s why I kind of walked by going, ‘Ah, I don’t think I should be saying anything.’ But it’s hard, and I’m Italian, which doesn’t [help]. But it’s the Olympic Games, and for some of us it’s our last Olympic Games, and to have the gold medal just .... gone, out of our view, is hard to deal with.”

Tancredi said she thought suspending Sinclair “would be an incredibly bad move” on FIFA’s part. “At this stage, you can’t hold players back from a bronze medal due to passionate comments. It happens all the time, and we are sorry for going so deep with them, but we couldn’t hold it back, obviously. And now we’re just out to do the next job.”

The next job, if they manage to get it done, would be an Olympic bronze medal that would stand with the best Canada has ever won.

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Letting Canada, and its stars, play in Olympic bronze-medal soccer match right non-call by FIFA

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